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WINDSOR, ENGLAND – OCTOBER 12: Princess Eugenie walks down the aisle with her father, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, for her wedding to Jack Brooksbank at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle on October 12, 2018 in Windsor, England. (Photo by Yui Mok – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Once again, Prince Andrew’s association with a rich but potentially unsavory international figure has emerged as a headache for the royal family.

Following Princess Eugenie’s lavish Oct. 12 wedding, it was learned that one of her father’s guests to the Windsor Castle event was Richard Liu, the billionaire Chinese internet mogul who is under investigation for rape in the United States, the Times of London and the Daily Mail are reporting.

Chinese billionaire Richard Liu, 45 friend of Prince Andrew was invited to Princess Eugenie's wedding even though he had been investigated over an alleged rape https://t.co/y42nxn26BJ#OpDeathEaters

Liu, 45, is founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com and a sponsor of one of the Duke of York’s business initiatives, Kensington Palace disclosed to the Daily Mail.

Liu, worth an estimated $10.8 billion, was arrested on Aug. 31 on suspicion of rape in Minneapolis, where he was attending a business administration doctorate course for executives at the University of Minnesota, the Business Insider reported.

Richard Qiangdong Liu, founder, chairman and CEO of JD.com speaks to employees as JD.com has its initial public offering on the Nasdaq exchange in 2014. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Liu was booked and detained for about 16 hours, then released with no bail requirement as police completed their investigation, the Business Insider said. The case is now in the hands of prosecutors who will decide whether to file charges.

Some reports said the charge stems from a claim by a 21-year-old University of Minnesota student who alleges Liu forced her to have sex with him after a dinner party.

He faces a first-degree felony charge, the most serious of sexual assault charges under Minnesota law, the South China Morning Post reported. If convicted he faces up to 30 years in prison.

Liu, the 16th richest person in China, has denied the charge through his company JD.com. But shares of JD.com fell 6 percent in New York following news of Liu’s arrest.

The Daily Mail reported that his appearance at Princess Eugenie’s wedding was one of the first times he had been seen in public since his arrest over the Labor Day weekend.

Liu and his wife, 24-year-old Internet personality Zhang Zetian, were among the 850 guests attending Eugenie’s marriage to Jack Brooksbank at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Palace officials have refused to publish a list of guests, but Liu and Zhang were spotted during a broadcast of proceedings on the royal family’s YouTube channel, the Times of London reported.

The Daily Mail added that another of Andrew’s controversial guests at the wedding, which cost U.K. taxpayers some $2 million, was convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni.

Prince Andrew and Kaituni, who holds U.S. citizenship, first became friendly in 2005, the Daily Mail reported. Kaituni once boasted of his influence over the Duke of York and helped broker secret meetings for Andrew with the late dictator Colonel Gaddafi. He also claimed in interviews that he played a key role in the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The presence of both Liu and Kaituni raises ongoing questions about Andrew’s judgement, the Daily Mail said.

Over the years both Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson have generated a number of scandals that have embarrassed Queen Elizabeth II and given justification to U.K. citizens who think the monarchy is a corrupt and wasteful anachronism that should be abolished.

Andrew was at the center of perhaps the biggest of these scandals, involving his friendship with another billionaire accused of sexually predatory behavior.

In 2011, Andrew was forced to step down from his prominent position as special UK representative over his association with U.S. billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted pedophile who was accused of running a ring in which he groomed underaged girls to entertain his powerful male friends.

News emerged in 2011 that Epstein had once hooked Andrew up with one of his “sex slaves.” Court records in lawsuits stemming from the case alleged that Epstein forced a 17-year-old girl “to have sexual relations” on three separate occasions with “a member of the British Royal Family, Prince Andrew (a/k/a Duke of York),” The Guardian reported. The encounters are alleged to have happened in New York, in London and in the US Virgin Islands as part of an “orgy with numerous other under-aged girls.”

Buckingham Palace never denied Andrew was friends with Epstein, but it insisted the prince never had any sexual contact with the girl, the Guardian said.

Since then, there have been efforts by Andrew and by some in the royal family to rehabilitate his image. The once handsome prince was seen as falling into a dissolute lifestyle. He also has gained a reputation for pomposity and self-importance that has made him a frequent object of derision in British society, Daily Beast writer Tom Sykes wrote.

It appears that Andrew’s sense of self-importance was guiding his demands about Eugenie’s wedding. Britons had begun grumbling about the scale of the wedding, and the $2 million in security costs, which would be covered by taxpayers.

Eugenie’s wedding came five months after the much more popular wedding in the same Windsor Castle location of a much more popular royal duo: Prince Harry and American Meghan Markle.

Andrew reportedly insisted that Eugenie’s big day receive the same level of pomp and global media attention as her cousin Harry’s wedding — even though Eugenie, unlike Harry and Meghan, is not a working royal family member.

Moreover, Harry’s wedding to Meghan, who is biracial, divorced and a self-described feminist, was seen as heralding in a new era of a more inclusive monarchy, the New York Times commented.

Eugenie’s wedding, on the other hand, came to be seen more as a private affair intended to benefit the high-society networking potential for the nearly 1,000 people on the guest list. The public is now learning that the list included Liu and Kaituni.

With regard to Liu, a Kensington Palace spokesperson told the Daily Mail that JD.com is a corporate partner of Pitch@Palace, an initiative set up by the Duke of York to champion entrepreneurship in the UK and overseas.

“JD.com has been a long term strategic partner in the same way as a number of other organizations, providing resources, support and advocacy for the initiative and those it works with,” the spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

The outlet added Andrew has ventured to China at least seven times in the past 14 years, most recently in May when he paid a visit to the Beijing headquarters of JD.com, the second-largest Chinese e-commerce company after Alibaba.

Princess Eugenie and her father Prince Andrew, Duke of York arrive for her wedding at St. George’s Chapel. (Photo by Jeremy Selwyn – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Liu reportedly had been in Minneapolis from Aug. 26 to Sept. 1 to complete a residency at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, according to Bloomberg.

He was studying in the U.S.-China business administration doctoral program, which is typically for tech industry executives and involves working on dissertation ideas, networking with local companies, as well as being taken to football games, museums and social events in Minneapolis, Bloomberg reported.

Martha Ross is a features writer who covers everything and anything related to popular culture, society, health, women’s issues and families. A native of the East Bay and a graduate of Northwestern University and Mills College, she’s also a former hard-news and investigative reporter, covering crime and local politics.

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